Microsoft has confirmed that Gears of War 5 (or Gears 5, to use it’s proper name) will be arriving on Xbox One and premiering on Game Pass on September 10 – just three days before Borderlands 3. Good lord, we’re going to have a busy Autumn.
The release date had already leaked a few hours before Microsoft’s E3 conference of course, because that’s how these things seems to work these days. Alongside the release date reveal, we also got a look at a pretty moody trailer scored by non other than Billie Eilish, and the reveal of a new multiplayer mode called Escape.
The Coalition head Rod Fergusson took to the Microsoft stage to tell us a little bit more about Escape, in which teams of players plant bombs in enemy hives before attempting to escape in one piece. It looks like there’ll be plenty of new weapons and abilities for this mode too, including a knife that lets you summon lightning.
A multiplayer tech test for Gears of War 5 is scheduled for July 17, so expect to be able to sign up for that and get your hands on the game next month.
In perhaps the biggest plot twist of the Gears segment of the show, it was revealed that the game will be getting special DLC based on the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate. I’m not entirely sure why, or even if the game particularly needs such a thing, but there we are.
It should be a busy year for the Terminator, especially if the rumours of him showing up as a character in Mortal Kombat 11 also turn out to be true, which I very much imagine will be the case.
Gears 5 will see Kait Diaz take on a starring role following her appearance in the last title as she fights to eradicate The Swarm once and for all.
The game will still offer all the cover based shooting fun you love from the franchise, but it’ll also place more emphasis on melee combat and exploration this time around.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.